nVidia 8600 GTS and 8600 GT - Foxconn and XFX

Introducing nVidia 8600

After the release of the 8800 series, consumers were all waiting for the mid-range cards to hit the shelves. nVidia let everyone hold their breath for a while and ATI haven't really gotten there yet, but we do now have them in our grubby mitts.

The mid-range section of the graphics market is a key market for the GPU makers and nVidia really hit this segment with the 6600GT when the 6 series came out. Just looking at something like the Valve hardware survey sees about 50% of the gamers using a 6600GT.

The 8600's are supposed to fill that gap that hasn't really been filled properly since...so let's see what's what.

What has been done different?

Well first of all it's an economy of scale. G84 is smaller than G80...by quite a lot. 32 stream processors replace 128 and the 384bit memory interface is replaced with a 128bit interface. This leaves me feeling a bit non-plussed. I appreciate that the mid-range cards will be cut-down versions of the top-end hardware but it seems to have been taken a little too far.

The one thing you notice is that the texture address units are increased in G84, with nVidia increasing the texture addressing per-clock cycle from 4 to 8 - giving a theoretical 16 cycles per clock. In reality though this doesn't really affect the numbers so not all that much has changed.

The ROP capabilities are also decreased with two lots of four ROP units capable of 8 pixels per clock to memory when implementing colour and Z-processing.

Also included is full hardware decoding of H.264 video as well as VC-1 content. I could not test this in this review as I am using Windows XP Professional for the tests and not Vista. An XP driver bringing these capabilities is currently being developed by nVidia.

Also included is full hardware decoding of H.264 video as well as VC-1 content. I could not test this in this review as I am using Windows XP Professional for the tests and not Vista. An XP driver bringing these capabilities is currently being developed by nVidia.

I don't know what ATI is doing but nVidia is about to eat into a big portion of their pie. If those prices equate to about $100 to $150 they really are good bang for the buck. That said, I myself wouldn't settle for less than a 8800GTS 320MB, seems like the best card out there for the money; 8600 cards do get a lot chopped off, so while the price is agreeable to the performance it may be a bit too little for a gamer to accept.

What I find interesting, pricewize, is that these cards are hitting the scene @.. well I`ve just had a quick look-see and u can get an MSI 8600 something for £90, up to an XFX XT £150.

Now each step-up in price seems to co-incide with a big of a clock step-up as standard to the cards, and around midway ~£120 - are cards that u could probably pur-chase and clock much better than the more expensive ones.

But - think again - EXPENSIVE, we`re only talking about £30.

It seems to me that market-wize they`re making these cards for a spread of purchasers that would like to say their card is `overclocked` (although straight out of the plastic, but it sounds good) ; overclockers who will buy a kinda midrange and do the rest themselves ; and of course the cheapest I can find section.

What supprizes me most tho is that on release the prices are as low as they are. AND u can see 8800s coming down... is a G90 based card that close ? or are they really trying to spank ATi ?

I bought the XFX 8600GTS standard version clocked at 675MHz and it is a big improvement for playing games in 1280x1024 compared to my previous 7800GT.

You can OC the XFX 8600GTS very easily at the same clock as the XXX version 730MHz and even push the GPU up to 775MHz (similar OC Kemp did to the XXX version in the review), thus you can save some bucks on the purchase.

Register for the OC3D Newsletter

Subscribing to the OC3D newsletter will keep you up-to-date
on the latest technology reviews, competitions and goings-on at Overclock3D.
We won't share your email address with ANYONE, and we will only email you with updates on site news, reviews, and competitions and you can unsubscribe easily at any time.

Simply enter your name and email address into the box below and be sure to click on the links in the
confirmation emails that will arrive in your e-mail shortly after to complete the registration.